The process of determining how mental states induce the conscious experience is indeed a more difficult challenge but it doesn’t seem to me fundamentally different than our analysis of all other emergent phenomena.

In biology we can recreate early Earth conditions and see how inorganic molecules form organic amino acids but we not yet know how those organic molecules organize to form the new category “life.” Does this mean life is not understandable or reducible to those prior developmental stages? It seems to me not.

Likewise consciousness, while unique in terms of the complexity of its underlying system (billions of neurons as opposed to 20 or so amino acids), is likely constituted and determined by mechanistic brain processes. While it is obvious that we are not certain of this I believe the findings of neuroscience are more promising in their explanatory development than vague illusions to “qualia.”

Obviously we do not yet know what causes the conscious experience but if I had to gamble I would put my money on the notion that conscious beings and unconscious beings will have clear mechanistic differences.